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Public attitudes toward mental illness. Myths about mental illness. The problem of stigma and the stigmatization of mental illness sufferers.enThu, 21 Mar 2019 18:27:51 GMTvBulletin60https://forum.psychlinks.ca/images/metro/green/misc/rss.pnghttps://forum.psychlinks.ca/
Weyburn, Sask, rejects home for people with disabilities: stigma and property valueshttps://forum.psychlinks.ca/showthread.php?36308-Weyburn-Sask-rejects-home-for-people-with-disabilities-stigma-and-property-values&goto=newpost
Wed, 13 Mar 2019 20:10:47 GMTWeyburn council rejects home for people with disabilities, citing 'stigma' and property values
by Alicia Bridges, CBC News
March 13, 2019

'It kind of dashes the dreams and hopes of the people that live there currently,' says Councillor Brad Wheeler

Care home workers, residents and their loved ones are planning to protest in a new Weyburn, Sask. subdivision where a proposal for a new group care home for people with disabilities was rejected on Monday. (CBC)

City councillors in Weyburn, Sask., have voted to reject the construction of a group home for people with disabilities in a new subdivision, citing safety concerns and a potential impact on property prices.
The Saskatchewan Housing Corporation had applied to build a group care home for a maximum four occupants in The Creeks neighbourhood, a newer subdivision in the city of Weyburn.

Councillor Brad Wheeler, who said he lives in the neighbourhood, was among those who voted against the proposal.

'It will probably impede the development'
"It kind of dashes the dreams and hopes of the people that live there currently. It will probably impede the development of that immediate area going forward," said Wheeler in Weyburn's council meeting on March 11.

"I know it's not politically correct to say there's a stigma attached to them but there is. You have to be honest with yourself.

"I feel bad that that's the case but these people have invested a lot of money into their dream homes, their retirement homes."

Under the proposal, the housing corporation planned to build the home for people with mental and physical disabilities.

They shouldn't be denied an opportunity to live in a certain area of town just because they are disabled. ~ Weyburn group home manager Niki Woycik

It would then be operated under 24-hour supervision by Weyburn Group Home Society, which runs seven other group homes in Weyburn.

City planner Amanda Kauffman recommended that councillors approve the development, but the motion was voted down.

Wheeler said people who built in The Creeks subdivision might not have if they knew there was a proposal to build a group care home.

"All the people that built there, built there under the understanding that it wasn't an exclusive neighbourhood but it was the closest thing to ... [in] Weyburn."

"There were architectural controls and most of them built their lifetime homes or moved into their retirement homes there," he said in the meeting.

Residents of subdivision oppose home in group letter
"I think the average price of the houses in that area would probably be north of $700,000, which isn't really relevant, but when they made their plans there was no discussion of group homes in the area," Wheeler said.

A letter signed by "Residents of The Creeks subdivision" was sent to the mayor and councillors in response to a callout for feedback - part of the process for approving discretionary use developments.

"It is important to note that there are many children and young families in the neighbourhood who wish to maintain the character of the neighbourhood and who have safety concerns," said the letter.

"The Notice is not specific regarding factors considered for approval by the Ministry of Social Services or what is meant by 24-hour supervision."

They also raised concerns about there being more traffic in the area.

Councillors Wheeler, Winston Bailey and Jeff Chessall, along with Mayor Marcel Roy, each voted against the proposal at a Monday council meeting. Councillor Mel Van Betuw recused himself from the vote, citing a conflict of interest as he rents out property to Sask. Housing for a group home elsewhere in the city.

He wouldn't comment to CBC News on the vote outcome.

CBC has contacted the other councillors and mayor for comment.

Councillor Dick Michel put forward a motion to delay the decision and ask for more information from the Saskatchewan Housing Corporation but it was defeated.

Protest planned Wednesday
Niki Woycik, who manages several of the society's existing group homes in Weyburn, said care home workers, residents and their family members are planning to walk through The Creeks subdivision with placards on Wednesday.

She said the Weyburn Group Home Society needs another home because it currently supports 52 people and it has reached its capacity.

"I think people need to get up to date on people with disabilities," said Woycik. "There's nothing to be concerned about, they're just like every one of us."

(Shutterstock)

"What would they do if they had a family member with a disability? How would they feel if they found out a family member couldn't move into a community because people wouldn't want them there?"

Woycik said the group homes allow people to live independently with support from the society, which also helps them to get jobs.

She said the society has never had any neighbour complaints about its existing group homes.

Rejection will lengthen wait list for group homes
Weyburn people with disabilities will have to go on a wait list for a group home in another community until a new facility can be built, said Woycik.

"They should be treated equally and they shouldn't be denied an opportunity to live in a certain area of town just because they are disabled," she said.

"We have homes all over our community and the neighbourhoods and neighbours all enjoy having the group homes in their communities.

"It's pretty sad to see that a brand new area of town does not want to have a group home there."

Relatives concerned about wait lists
Michelle Roemer has a younger brother who could potentially need to enter a group home when he reaches the age requirement of 18.

She does not accept the councillors' and residents' arguments for rejecting the group home proposal.

"All these arguments and reasons they are giving for not wanting this in their community to me just reflects the bigger issue of discrimination," she said.

"Participants and individuals living in group homes are not criminals," said Roemer.

"It's not going to in any way affect the safety of their community. We have many group homes situated throughout the city and that has never been an issue in the past."

Without more capacity in the group home system, she is concerned people like her younger brother could have to move to another community to receive the same level of care.

"It really hurts my heart to know that people are afraid to approach disabled people, or that they are afraid to be their neighbours."
]]>Attitudes, Myths, Stigma, and Raising AwarenessDavid Baxterhttps://forum.psychlinks.ca/showthread.php?36308-Weyburn-Sask-rejects-home-for-people-with-disabilities-stigma-and-property-valuesRebranding Shame and Expanding Our Labelshttps://forum.psychlinks.ca/showthread.php?36295-Rebranding-Shame-and-Expanding-Our-Labels&goto=newpost
Fri, 22 Feb 2019 16:23:00 GMT*Rebranding Shame and Expanding Our Labels (http://thereseborchard.com/2019/02/21/rebranding-shame-and-expanding-our-labels/)*
by Therese Borchard...Rebranding Shame and Expanding Our Labels
by Therese Borchard
February 21, 2019

Hi, I’m Therese, I’m a recovering alcoholic, former smoker, and past anorexic; a depressive and bipolar; and a graduate of two inpatient psychiatric programs. I’m also intelligent, driven, compassionate, sensitive, creative, playful, and loving. Although the world has erected a solid wall between the above two statements, I’m on a mission to tear it down—not only for my sake, for everyone who has been treated differently courtesy of their labels.

Label me, please
For 12 years I have donned my labels as a reminder of my humble beginnings and as a means to serve others. I have dropped my perfect façade in order to confess struggles with insecurity, self-loathing, and addiction. Although my index finger hovers over the publish button for a good half-hour whenever I disclose an unbecoming quality, I feel empowered by sharing the intimate details of my life with readers in hope that they will feel less alone.

That’s not to say I have completely shed my shame. My labels are the landing spots in my psyche for those persons, places, things, or events that have the potential to embarrass or disappoint me.

“We need labels to figure out what groceries to buy and which schools to go to,” he says. “We do well with physical labels. But when it comes to mental health, we really struggle … because we think a label comes with a certain amount of dysfunction. If you’re depressed, you can’t get out of bed. People with ADHD perform poorly in school. The drug addict leaves everything behind because getting high is the most important thing in the world.”

They are simple statements that often influence how we view a person. While labels can help us better understand our friends and relatives and co-workers–and lead to life-saving treatments–they can also shove a person into a confining box and draw thick lines around a personality. We absolutely need diagnoses, but they can generate stereotypes that indirectly attach shame where there should only be acceptance and understanding. Labels themselves aren’t so much the problem, rather the use of labels to dehumanize people– when we forget about the person underneath the diagnosis and when we forget that everyone is dealing with something.

Jaffe talks about how labels deter people from getting the help they need. A person would rather suffer in silence than admit to a diagnosable disorder and receive the proper treatment because he or she doesn’t want to be associated with the common stereotype. As wrong as that is, I sympathize with the person. The ugly truth is that wearing the label of bipolar of depressed or addict does provoke judgement and disdain. That’s no fault of the treatment team or the mental health field or the individual. It’s a fault of our society.

Labels and unconscious bias
We have to be careful about the stereotypes we attach to certain diagnoses because such descriptions drive behavior.

Jaffe explained an experiment called the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition. Teachers at Oak School tested the IQs of first and second graders at the beginning of the year. The teachers were then informed that certain students would be given the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition, suggesting that these students were brighter or had more academic potential than the others. At the end of the year IQ scores were measured again. The students selected to take the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition had an increase of 15 points in their IQs. Little did the teachers know that there was no such thing as the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition. The students weren’t special. They were chosen at random. It was primarily the teachers’ attitudes towards these students and the expectation for them to excel that generated the increase in scores.

It turns out even rats know when they’re labeled. In another experiment, researchers labeled some Albino rats as “maze bright” and some as “maze dull.” The rats labeled as bright learned the mazes 50 percent more quickly than those that were labeled dull. Says Jaffe, “The subjects we care about don’t even need to understand the labels we place on them to impact their performance.”

I recently completed a training on unconscious bias that made me realize the degree of difficulty involved in erasing certain stereotypes. In the exercise, you had to say out loud the word that showed up on the screen. A series of colors were presented: BLUE was printed in blue ink, RED in red ink, etc. No brainer. Until you had to say BLUE when it was printed in black ink, and RED when it was in blue. The exercise was surprisingly difficult and made me think about my unconscious associations with certain labels: bipolar, depressed, addict, etc.

The person beneath the diagnosis
Jaffe gives his audience two directives: Those wearing labels should take back ownership of what’s been placed on them — to take what fits and throw away the rest—and to build their own brand. Everyone else should take responsibility of the labels and stereotypes we attach to people, concentrating on the human being beneath the diagnosis and on his or her multifaceted dimensions.

“We need labels to help understand the world,” says Jaffe, “but we have to get comfortable with a much more nuanced, complex version of these labels. It’s up to us to introduce to the world the attributes and potential of the people who are labeled and stop considering them dysfunctional.”

It’s tempting to define persons according to their labels. That takes less brain power. It’s equally as tempting to divide the world into two groups of people: those with labels or issues, and those without. However, such a divide doesn’t exist. I don’t know of anyone without some kind of difficulty or challenge, only those who don’t publicly confess their issues in a blog or perhaps haven’t yet identified them.

Kudos to the brave ones like Jaffe, a former cocaine dealer turned psychologist and public speaker, who slap on a few – addict and ADHD sufferer — in order to help other people. Those are the people who inspire me.

“I don’t succumb to the shame I feel every day,” says Jaffe. “I’m not an addict. I’m not an ADHD sufferer. I’m way more than all those things.”